New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre Inspires at Verizon's National Domestic Violence Summit
New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre took the stage at Verizon's first National Domestic Violence Summit to share the story of his childhood in a household victimized by domestic abuse.
"It wasn't talked about, but there were whispers and I thought I had done something wrong," Torre said.
Torre said that he didn't recall seeing his father hit his mother, but he knew the family had to be very careful when his father was at home. When he came home from school, he said, he would go directly to a friend's house if he saw his father's car parked outside.
It wasn't until he attended a self-help seminar in 1995 that his long-repressed memories of his father's abuse suddenly returned.
"I found myself standing in front of a room full of strangers crying my eyes out, talking about my feelings," he said.
That experience prompted Torre to call one of his sisters to learn more about the abuse his mother suffered at the hands of his father and then to establish the Safe at Home Foundation in memory of his mother, Margaret.
As part of its commitment to the education and empowerment of victims, the Verizon Foundation will support an ongoing partnership with the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation to establish a Margaret's Place in a New Jersey high school. Margaret's Place combines individual and group counseling as well as interactive workshops to teach students about healthy relationships, and talk to them about abuse witnessed in the home or perpetrated in their own behavior.
Also at the event, the National Domestic Violence Summit – Building Solutions, Verizon Foundation President Patrick Gaston announced nearly $1 million in grants benefiting 93 groups in 21 states throughout the country. The grants support online education, technology that improves program delivery and empowerment of victims.
"The impact of domestic violence touches every sector of society – from family, to school, to the workplace – yet it is an issue that is all too often unseen or ignored," said Gaston. "We salute and support Mr. Torre and others like him who courageously work to prevent domestic violence and support its victims."
The Verizon Foundation and its partners, the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence (CAEPV), Family Violence Prevention Fund and National Domestic Violence Hotline, hosted the National Domestic Violence Summit. The event featured panel discussions on the effects of domestic violence on the workplace and workforce, how technology can enhance programs, and highlighted effective programs that deliver substantive outcomes in prevention of and recovery from domestic violence.
Verizon Wireless CEO Denny Strigl and an executive panel including Yolanda B. Jimenez, commissioner of the Office to Combat Domestic Violence of the City of New York, and Dan Mead, president of Verizon Services Operations, spoke to the summit attendees about the importance of companies taking an active role in addressing the issue of domestic violence.
"One in five employed adults in the United States today is a victim of domestic violence, Strigl said. That's a call in my opinion to every CEO and to every HR professional. When you apply those statistics to my company alone, Verizon Wireless, with our 60,000 employees, it means that 12,000 people are currently victims of domestic violence."
Verizon Wireless has a long-standing commitment to the issue of the domestic violence prevention through the Verizon Wireless HopeLine® program. Since Oct. 2001, the program has collected more than 3 million wireless phones and recycled more than 700,000, given $2 million in cash grants and nearly $10 million in wireless phones and service to domestic violence prevention organizations.
"You know, we have 57 million customers within Verizon Wireless now and many of those customers come into our stores so they see the Hope Line boxes, they know what that's about," Mead said. "We make sure that our customers know the benefit that comes out of that. So, there is a tremendous awareness out in the community."
